‘Don’t allow fake degree holders, defaulters, dual nationals’

Petitioner says ECP not serious about stopping such politicians.

LAHORE:

A lawyer has petitioned the Lahore High Court not to let politicians with fake degrees or those who are tax defaulters, have dual nationalities or do not have a national tax number contest the elections.

The petition was filed by Advocate Azhar Siddique on Saturday, who prayed that the court direct the Election Commission of Pakistan to hold free and fair elections.

The petition states that a large number of parliamentarians elected in the 2008 elections had fake degrees, were tax or defaulters, held dual nationalities or did not have a national tax number. History will repeat itself, fears Siddique, if the commission does not take action against them. It seems that the election commission has no plans of taking any action against such legislators, states the petition. Siddique says that the degrees of about 180 ex-parliamentarians are yet to be verified and there are dozens who have yet to submit affidavits denying a foreign nationality that they hold. The petitioner has said in his application that the Election Commission’s recently declaring the degrees of 27 parliamentarians as authentic was ‘a pack of lies’ because the Higher Education Commission had declared some of them bogus.

Siddique has also prayed that the appointments made by former premier Raja Pervaiz Ashraf be declared illegal.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2013.